|
Many in
the Alpine Community would be aware of the significant work that has
gone into restructuring and recasting the National Alpine program
for the next four year cycle.
SSA together with the OWI, and NSWIS have proposed a new look
National Alpine program which is designed to provide greatly
improved opportunity for Australian alpine skiing athletes.
The aim of the National Alpine Skiing Program is to operate a
centralized
National Training Centre activity.
A clear priority focus for the next four years is to achieve
significant results at the 2010 OWG in Vancouver. As part of the
strategy adopted to facilitate this, remaining World Cup athletes
Jono Brauer and Craig Branch will resume placement with
International Teams during the Northern Hemisphere season.
Further to these elite aims, there is the recognised need to ensure
the establishment of a solid legacy from the operations of this
program over the upcoming quadrennial.
In order to provide for a more complete alpine sporting system as a
feeder for the elite levels, opportunities for development male and
female athletes to transition through to Europa Cup and WC
competition are to be implemented.
This will be initially handled through a mix of own program and
possible foreign team placement opportunities in order to best
leverage all available resources in the most productive and
effective manner.
As part of this element, the increased program co-ordination
in Alpine Skiing will largely be the responsibility of
Program Coaches & Managers. Three talented and motivated
Australian coaches have been appointed to the program to
commence the initial phase. Mike Gould and Matt Lyons will
take on a coaching and co-program management role,
predominately at the development level. Jo Draxl will be
employed primarily in an on-snow technical coaching role.
The program will operate based out of Jindabyne Sport & Rec
with the on-snow training supported by Thredbo and Perisher
Blue.
11 Alpine Athletes will be offered initial scholarships with the
NSWIS National Alpine Program. These include: Jono Brauer, Craig
Branch, Hugh Stevens, Bryce Stevens, Demian Franzen, Will Clifford,
Tom Mathias, Christian Geiger, Patrick Sweeney, Katya Crema, Tomi
Crewes.
The need for change has come about largely due to a number of
circumstances that came to a head at the completion of the last
quadrennial. In brief these included:
|
• |
Head
Coach Mick Branch resignation |
|
• |
Program Coordinator Andrew Logan resignation |
|
• |
Retirement of 3x World Cup athletes (AJ Bear, Brad Wall and Luke
Deane) |
|
• |
Poor
overall performances at the OWG 2006 |
|
• |
A
need to provide program space for male & female underpinning
athletes |
|
• |
A
clear need to achieve a top 10 outcome by the Alpine Skiing
program at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games |
The
current program design will be reviewed after year 1 and adjusted
according to athlete & coach performances and an evaluation of the
effectiveness of the program.
Overall, the design and operations proposed are seen to provide for
the best possible outcomes, utilizing available resources and to
help steer the Alpine skiing program into a performance-based,
flexible, on-going and viable elite development sporting system.
Equipment
The
Alpine FIS Committee resolved at the FIS Congress in Vilamoura,
Portugal that there would be no changes to the FIS equipment rules
and specifications. To view the equipment rules please follow the
links below.
|
